pleistocene

In 2015, what was thought to be a dinosaur’s egg by a passerby was discovered 25 miles (40 km) south of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The meter-long “black scaly shell” was later identified as the carapace, the hard upper shell, of an extinct armored animal called a glyptodont.

Soils from an ancient meadow on a small island on the central coast of British Columbia preserve footprints of early Native Americans. Although most of the northern Pacific Coast was a wall of glacial ice at the time, pockets of forested land accessible by boat allowed early migrants to survive and thrive.

The robust forelimbs of saber-toothed cats are thought to have helped wrestle struggling prey to the ground before using their long teeth to slash a killing blow. This burly build was needed to ensure the long teeth weren’t broken by struggling prey.

Two small bone fragments found in Athens represent the last known monitor lizard in Europe. This small lizard lived at the onset of the last Ice Age in the last warm refuge in Europe.

Even though only two kinds of elephant are alive today the history of their family, scientifically known as Proboscideans, is one of success. They managed to live on most continents around the globe, from Southeast Asia to South America, and adapted to different climates and habitats. And few species were so successful as Stegodon.

Extensive archaeological and anthropological data suggest that the first humans entered the Americas about 15,000 years ago from Asia to Alaska. A 130,000-year-old mastodon skeleton discovered in suburban San Diego shows signs of butchery only associated with ancient humans.

A fossil-bearing cave in northeastern Spain that has yielded the most complete skeleton of the extinct cave hyena yet known, greatly improving on partial remains found elsewhere. The deposits in the cave, known as Las Aprendices, have been dated to approximately 144,000 years ago. The cave offers a snapshot of the environment and wildlife encountered by the first humans moving into Europe.

The last populations of woolly mammoths lived on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Siberia. Comparison of specimens from Wrangel Island and the Siberian mainland show that the island populations accumulated a number of genetic mutations that would adversely affect the last living mammoths.

Amphicyonids were a family of carnivores that lived in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa for about 45 million years. They were part of a group of mammals called “Caniformia”, which includes animals such as seals, raccoons, weasels, skunks, otters, bears and dogs. The similarities of Amphicyonids and these last two are what gave them the colloquial name of “bear-dogs”.

We pride ourselves on being the world’s greatest predators but once in our long history, we were the hunted and not the hunters. Bones from Morocco reveal the shocking tale of how some human ancestors met their match at the hands of bone-crushing teeth.

Scientists never expected to find remains of saber-toothed cats in the grasslands of Argentina's Pampas region. But research indicates these animals hunted the plains of South America during the last ice age.

Gigantic one-horned beasts once roamed the frozen steppes and tundra of Siberia. They were a species of rhino, more than two meters at the shoulder who grazed these areas in huge numbers during the last Ice Age. That is, until their extinction.

If an island is large enough and isolated from land-based predators for enough time, one thing invariably happens: giant birds evolve.

In the middle of the city of Los Angeles lies one of the most important fossil sites in all the world. The La Brea tar pits preserve an Ice Age eden beyond the grip of the huge glaciers that leveled North America.

The cave lion was a highly successful and adaptable predator that ruled the steppes of Ice Age Eurasia with an iron paw. Now, with the discovery of two cubs in the Siberian permafrost there is talk of bringing this magnificent creature to life. But should we?

Seven species of giant rats from East Timor have been discovered by a team of archeologists. The largest one grew ten times as big as modern-day rats.

While adult megaherbivores were too large for predators to take down, juvenile mammoths, mastodons, and ground sloths might have fallen prey to packs of sabretooth cats, cave lions and giant hyenas. This balance made sure there was enough plant matter for smaller animals to thrive on during Ice Age North America.

Paleontologists studying Smilodon fatalis, or the saber-toothed cat, have discovered that its dagger-like teeth grew at twice the rate of living big cats.

DNA extracted from bones collected in the Yukon show that North America's last camel was a close relative of Old World camels and not llamas as previously thought.

Two wonderfully weird animals from the last ice age of South America never had a real home in the mammal family tree. Through protein sequencing of fossil bones, scientists have found their closest living relatives.

Cougars coexisted with five other big cats in North America during the last Ice Age, and while other species perished it managed to survive. The secret of its resilience may have been a lenient diet.